Sysinternals Live online

I’ve been trying to figure out since yesterday why Microsoft’s decision to make the Sysinternals’ body of utilities available by browsing the folder where they are stored on their website was a big deal. I went to http://live.sysinternals.com where the utilities are now available and the best it felt was clunky. No wonder reporting on this “new” availability is slim. Ed Bott mentions it here

It just dawned on me … I can make it a network place in Windows Explorer and I have a folder with all of those utilities ready to use and the latest version to boot. Here’s how …

Windows Vista

In Windows Explorer, just right click on Computer and then Add a Network Location. When the Wizard Comes up use http://live.sysinternals.com and complete. Now there is an entry under the Network node in Explorer.

Windows XP

The steps are a bit different in XP ….

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Network and Internet Connections.
2. Under See Also, click My Network Places.
3. Click Add a network place. The Add Network Place Wizard starts.
4. Click Next to continue.
5. Click Choose another network location, and then click Next.
6. In the Internet or network address box, type the name of the network share that you want to use. ( \\live.sysinternals.com\tools)
7. Click Next.
8. In the Type a name for this network place box, type the name that you want, and then click Next.
9. Click Finish. 

Default security settings don’t allow the html help files to run off this folder unless you make it trusted. The choice is yours and up to you to figure out how to do it.

My next step will be to publish this via group policy so that it is available with my admin login on every machine in the place.